The present invention relates to selling products on the Internet, and in particular to simplifying the user purchasing experience.
Most websites follow a model popularized by Amazon.com and others. The user first selects the product on a product webpage, then must navigate through the checkout pages on separate webpages.
Currently the Internet experience mirrors the physical. In the brick and mortar world, a user walks from storefront to storefront to buy goods. On the Internet, a user navigates from website to website. Some websites are like shopping malls, with users able to go to one site, but then navigating from page to page. When advertising is done on other websites, the user can click on the ad to navigate to the storefront website selling the advertised goods. Once the user is at the storefront, the user first selects the product, then must navigate through the checkout pages.
Ads take many forms on the internet. Typically, a “banner ad” is a rectangular graphic element on a webpage has the artwork and product description, with a hyperlink. If the user clicks on the ad, the user is taken to the website offering the product or service. There are also pop-up ads, ads that incorporate video, pop-under ads and floating ads. These ads typically describe one product or service, or a class of products or services.
With respect to providing information to users, this takes many forms. In addition to webpages, ticker-type information can be provided which scrolls across the bottom of the screen, such as a stock ticker. RSS feeds can provide customized content, such as news subjects the viewer is interested in, pushed to a webpage for viewing.
US Patent Application Publication No. 20030020758 describes providing dynamically alterable banner ads. The ads can scroll either horizontally or vertically.
Unicast Communications Corporation U.S. Pat. No. 7,155,663 describes a number of prior art techniques for providing ads in webpages. A banner ad is generally produced by embedding HTML code for that banner within the HTML coding for a given web page. Consumers can obtain more information by clicking through the ad, thus being referred to the advertiser's site, and click through counts can be monitored. Interstitial ads are displayed in an interval of time that occurs after a user has clicked on a hot-link displayed by a browser to retrieve a desired web page but before that browser has started rendering that page. Ads can also be provided via a “push” application program that connects with a server, typically during off-hours. Ads are downloaded for later display. A user profile is used to determine the type of ads for that user. Real-time downloading and rendering of advertising HTML files uses advertising files stored on remote web servers. These ads show content in a “streamed” media file that relies on a continuous real-time network connection existing to a remote web server.
The '663 patent goes on to describe decoupling referring web page content from its corresponding advertising content, allowing an advertiser to easily update ads. Multi-threaded pipelining is used, processing each ad as a different thread.
US Patent Application Publication No. 20070083440 describes electronic advertising that enables a consumer to purchase advertised products while remaining connected to a hosting web site. The banner ads contain links that are activated to send a request to the banner applet for additional product information, or for an order form to allow the consumer to purchase the advertised product. The banner applet supplies on-demand information to the consumer workstations without causing the workstations to query the hosting server, or to terminate or suspend their active sessions with the sessions manager.